ENJOY-‘Ideas Are Seeds’
​LOOK-Istanbul’s Covered Market, Paris in Spring
​MEET-Auguste Renoir
​LEARN-Impressionism
​READ-Keeper of Lost Children by Sadequa Johnson, 2026

ENJOY-
‘Ideas Are Seeds’

Some days plentiful,
poking up like columbine leaves
between the stones.
Other days dry,
thoughts trapped in clay.
Seeds lie fallow.

Those days
I excavate images,
fertilize words,
wait for lines to shoot up
like squill after a soft shower
coating the garden in a deep blue shawl.

Susan Schwartz Twiggs

LOOK-Teas at Istanbul’s Covered Market, Paris in Spring

MEET-When I was sixteen, I went to Paris as part of a youth exchange. That experience set me on a course of adventure and travel. I’ve returned to the City of Light many times and even though it’s crowded and filled with tourists, I’m still in love. One reason is the beautiful art found in its monuments and museums. The timing of this trip coincided with an exposition about Renoir as a draftsman at the Museé D’Orsay.

Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the Impressionists and is well known for his bright colors and use of light. He is best known for his large oil paintings. Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe, Luncheon on the Grass (1863) was considered scandalous featuring a nude woman with fully dressed gentlemen at a picnic. The Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (1876) featured many of the painter’s friends and fellow artists. While some painters preferred painting en plein air, outdoors, Renoir began to move away from painting outside. He focused on portraits rendered in oil or pastels of children and women commissioned by other artists and admirers of his work. Some drawings were done as preparation for the final work.

“Around 1883, (according to Renoir,) there was a break in my work… I came to the realization that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw.” He used the painters Raphael and Ingres and the female nude itself as models. Renoir enjoyed painting domestic scenes: his partner, Aline Charigot breastfeeding their first son, Pierre and his son Jean with his nanny Gabrielle. He spent long hours preparing his compositions with large drawings. With the completion of Les Grandes Baigneuses, The Large Bathers (1884-1887) Renoir left the Impressionist school entirely.

In 1913, Renoir told fellow artists, “I’m just beginning to learn how to paint.” Despite having crippling arthritis he continued. Renoir maintained that "To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them."

Jean Renoir later became a famous movie director.

LEARN-Impressionism is a 19th‑century French art movement in which painters such as Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Pissarro rejected academic rules. They depicted modern life with loose, visible brushstrokes, bright unmixed colors, and an emphasis on the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. They painted everyday scenes—city streets, cafés, leisure activities, and landscapes—often working rapidly outdoors (en plein air) to record a momentary visual “impression”. By focusing on how a scene is perceived in a specific moment, Impressionism shifted Western art away from idealized, carefully finished compositions toward personal perception and direct observation.

Do you have a favorite artist or creative? I’d like to know.

READ- Keeper of Lost Children by Sadequa Johnson, 2026. This historical fiction novel set in Germany in the 1950’s tells the story of Ethel Gathers who was compelled to find homes for mixed race German children abandoned in German orphanages. Included are two other points of view of a young black soldier and one of the black adoptees 15 years later. The novel explores how one person can make a difference and how love in all its forms can change hearts and transform lives.

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